Hunter Committee Report

First Published: October 22, 2011 | Last Updated:November 24, 2015

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was followed by establishment of a non-official enquiry committee was Congress. The British Government did not initiate such inquiry till Congress had set up such committee.

Later, the Government established a Disorders Inquiry Committee headed by Lord William Hunter, a Senator of College of Justice of Scotland. This committee had 7 members viz. 4 British and 3 Indians.

Members of Hunter Committee

The 7 member Hunter Committee which was set up to investigate the Jallianwala Bagh Tragedy was also known as Disorders Inquiry Committee. The British members were as following:

Chairman: Lord William Hunter, ex- Solicitor-General and the Senator of the College of Justice in Scotland

WF Rice, Additional Secretary to the Government of India (Home Department)

Justice GC Rankin, Judge of the High Court, Calcutta;

Major General Sir George Barrow, Commandant of the Peshawar Division, a non-official Englishman

The Indian Members were as follows:

Sir Chimanlal Setalvad

Pandit Jagat Narayan

Sardar Sultan Ahmed Khan

The secretary of this committee was H G Stokes, secretary to the government of Madras.

Finding of Hunter Committee

Before the committee could publish its own report, Congress put forward its own view. This view criticized Dyer’s act as inhuman and also said that there was no justification in the introduction of the martial law in Punjab. But the Hunter Report, as expected saw the things differently. Although it condemned most of the decisions taken by General Dyer, it agreed with imposition of the martial law in Punjab. It also criticized the method of Satyagraha adopted by Gandhi and held Gandhi partially responsible for “deteriorated” law and order situation.

The result was the Dyer was sent to England, relived of his command. But rests of the things were the official opinion of the Government. This miffed Gandhi and he returned the Kaisar-I-Hind Gold medal. He said that the time has come when such blatant action of inhumanity could not be ‘remedied’ through the conventional political channels.

The time was ripe for the Khilafat Grievances as well. The result was the Indian National Congress joined hand with the Khilafat leaders and in the wake of once again shortly revived Hindu Muslim unity, Gandhi put forward the idea of nationwide non-cooperation campaign with the goal of attaining full Swaraj. as it was the only opinion left for the nationalists.